Double-blind clinical trial of sertraline treatment for alcohol dependence

Abstract

Clinical studies that have evaluated serotonergic medications to reduce alcohol consumption have yielded conflicting results. These studies primarily treated patients with alcohol dependence, excluding those with a current depressive disorder, in an effort to differentiate any medication effects directly on drinking from those on mood. Yet despite the exclusion of current depression, a group of alcohol-dependent patients who are not depressed can be highly heterogeneous. For example, this subgroup can include those with a lifetime depressive disorder. If these patients were more sensitive to serotonergic medications than patients without a lifetime depressive disorder, medication effects in a subgroup of patients who were not depressed could be obscured. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine the efficacy of sertraline for treating alcohol dependence in patient groups that were differentiated by the presence or absence of lifetime depression. This study examined the effectiveness of sertraline (200 mg/day) or placebo for 14 weeks in 100 alcohol-dependent subjects with (N = 53) or without (N = 47) a lifetime diagnosis of comorbid depression. Sertraline treatment seemed to provide an advantage in reducing drinking in alcohol-dependent patients without lifetime depression, illustrated best with a measure of drinking frequency during treatment. However, sertraline was no better than placebo in patients with a diagnosis of lifetime comorbid depression, and current depression did not change the results. Treatment with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors may be useful in alcohol-dependent patients who are not depressed. Subtyping those with alcohol dependence on the basis of the absence versus the presence of a lifetime depressive disorder may help to resolve conflicting findings in the literature on the treatment of alcohol dependence with serotonergic medications.